There are literally thousands of languages spoken throughout the human universe. While all have their origins on Ancient Era prior to the Emergence Era, the vast distances and periods of time saw even closely related languages change beyond easy recognition. Reconstructing such language groups have occupied generations of linguists.
On this page… (hide)
While Terra of this age had hundreds of languages, only a small group found their way to common usage as humanity took to space.
The lingua franca of this age was English, grouped by linguists in the time as a West Germanic language within the Germanic family of the Indo-European group of languages. While there were a number of different dialects spoken early on, mass communication and the need for a common dialect among various national groups colonizing the solar system and later the stars lead to the so-called Standard International English. With simplified spelling and grammar, it was adopted as the language of trade and diplomacy by many different cultural groups, and from it sprang many languages that evolved during the First Decline.
A distantly related language to English, but from the Romance family of the Indo-European languages, it was taken to the stars as well, though never in the numbers as English was. Still, it came to be the second most common language during the Emergence Era, and gave birth to a wide variety of languages later on.
The importance of Russia during the Emergence Era assured the Russian language's exporting into space. A distant relative of English and French (a Slavic language in the Indo-European family), it as well is the source of several later languages.
As important as Russian due to China's contributions to space exploration. It was heavily modified during the latter part of the Emergence Era, and diverged from its Terran parent, and was commonly called Neo-Chinese.
Like Chinese and Russian, it was taken into space as part of the Japanese space initiative. The most conservative of the major languages found in space, its speakers remained remarkably true to the pre-Emergence language.
While Arab nations contributed little directly to space programs, a large number of Arab orbital experts were produced. While most spoke English and French, their Muslim faith assured that the Arabic language went into space with them.
The languages of the Emergence Era could be found, in one form or another, during this era. The vast distances and time in transit meant that even during this period languages on various worlds begin to drift, with a number of different dialects. While the written styles of the languages remained largely static, spoken varieties were heavily altered.
Due to the sheer number of speakers and the fact that it was the most spoken language of the era, English early on divided into a number of dialects. The so-called Terran dialects, spoken among the Core Worlds, remained largely true to the Standard International English formulated during the Emergence Era, but other strains, such as Cassopeian English and Anglash New formed later on. Linguists still debate whether or not the mutual intelligibility was sufficient for some of these languages to still call them dialects. In particular, Anglash New and Rigussian where heavily altered variants which the ancient records indicate were difficult for speakers of other English dialects to understand.
Chinese had already seen some major changes among space-dwellers during the Emergence Era, and these changees became much more widespread. Neo-Guānhuà and Sinian were major languages born out of Chinese. Neo-Guānhuà in particular was quite different and completely unintelligible to speakers of other Chinese variatns.
The first truly new language of the First Expanse era was Juthathic. Beginning as something of a pidgin of Neo-Guānhuà and Arabic, it retained the syntactical structure of Chinese but with a heavily Arabicized vocabulary. A number of theories have been posited as to its precise origins, but there is a distinct lack of historical data. The few records of the period seem to suggest that its birth was quite quick, and that the language seemed to spring up within a few decades. The most widely accepted theory is that it was the product of Arab traders in Chinese colonial space, beginning as a pidgin but quickly adopting Neo-Guānhuà grammar. Towards the end of this era, it had begun to replace English as a lingua franca, and became one of the most common languages of commerce.
There are literally thousands of articles to be found on the alteration of various languages during this period. The true lack of historical information makes most of them little better than educated guesses. Few pre-Decline languages survived in recognizable form the long years of separation, and by its conclusion some five or six thousand languages were estimated to be spoken.
With thousands of languages, communication during the early years of this era were made very difficult. The earliest systems to regain interstellar capabilities spoke a number of languages that had evolved from English, but these languages were so changed that it helped very little in finding some common ground.
With the formation of the Terran Republic the decision was made to pick one language as the language of diplomacy and politics. Iuthian, a descendant of Juthathic, was selected due to its adoption by a large number of merchants. It was shortlived in that position, but spawned probably the most important language of the Era.
An odd language in many respects, the written form predates the spoken language (see Hagurin Character Set). Once the written form was adopted as the standard language of the Imperium, work was done to create a spoken variant. Based largely upon Iuthian, it became the language of commerce and official communications, and by the time of the High Imperium, was already supplanting other languages.
The so-called "Philosopher's Language", it was descended from English, though heavily influenced by Hagurin for much of its vocabulary. It was formed by a number of small societies after the formation of the Imperium, and was the language that the most important thinker of the Imperium age, Hans Richter Kuber, wrote his greatest works in. Following his example, increasing numbers of philosophers and theologians used the language, and a surprising number of holy books ended up being written in it. Late in the Imperium, the Librarian Society began making efforts to unite the language with Hagurin, the written form of which Oshiyanak was recorded in.
